I get busy again with hauling the two-by-four studs from the side of the barn where the delivery guys dropped them off, to the open space next to the trailer where I’ll construct the subfloor. While still in Boston, Cash and I ordered the lumber for the frame and floor and managed to get it delivered so that we could start today. The other materials we’ve ordered will arrive over the next few days.
The trailer is thirty-two feet long and getting the floor and frame up is going to be a hell of a job. I have to start today, with or without Georgiana’s help. There’s still plenty of time to crash this project, but I can’t sit around and wait for it to go up in flames.
I watch Georgiana from the corner of my eye. She sank into the desk chair a few minutes ago and now stares blindly at her laptop. My stomach is in a knot as I wait for her to close the screen, pack up, and walk out of here for the final time.
Everything I’ve done up until this morning has been suffocating any chance Team Raiden and George had, but then the TV crew arrived, and she was brilliant in dealing with them. Right now, I don’t care if she knows the difference between a stud detector and a petcock valve. With that mouth of hers, she’ll make up for all my failings when it comes to the TV interviews. I don’t even need her to lift a finger otherwise; I can push to do everything alone if I work the twenty-hour days it’s going to take.
Probation time it is.
Georgiana hasn’t walked out of the barn yet, but now that she knows about my stutter, she can mix that with her initial assessment of me—that of being an idiot—and see if she’s still up for this challenge. A stuttering idiot is one up from a plain idiot.
And yes, I’m screwed if she doesn’t stick around. Solo, I’ll be an even bigger idiot on camera. It’s the one epithet I’ve been tagged with most of my life that I’ve been busting my ass to get rid of. Going national with my stutter forever captured on film might kill me.
I’m not a fan of opening up to strangers about my speech impediment, especially if I’m never seeing them again, which was the first thing I probably subconsciously decided when Georgiana walked into Hunter’s office. It wasn’t just George is a Georgiana and Cash’s unwritten no-females policy that sang like a choir in the back of my head. It was also the fact that I generally don’t stutter around guys in the construction industry.
Guys tend to get a job done with a few words and a grunt or two. Yeah, some of them are assholes, but at the end of the day they’re like family and in the stutter-free zone. I clammed up in that office yesterday and didn’t tell her about my stutter first thing as I usually would have. Last night’s drinking binge eased my tongue, but it only delayed the inevitable.
There’s no chance in hell I can let Georgiana go back to Miami, but I managed to piss her off even more this morning and she had a right to be furious. I’m never late. The crew was early. If I’d been on time, I would have told her about my speech issues, but they were ready to film and gave me no gap to breathe, order the words, and put it out there for her to digest.
And then we had that little interlude in the boathouse.
Her. Me. Up close in a tight space. Her hand on my chest. Her eyes roaming over me with her breath like soft feathers that soothed over my skin, kindling a slow burn in my blood.
That’s one way to spell trouble.
The same urge for her to be gone resurfaces, but for different reasons. She’s too beautiful to work on a building site. She comes from money and is on the run from something I still need to figure out—she did, after all, mention last night that she’s got nowhere else to go and won’t be welcome at home. Boyfriend trouble? Bad-ass ex? He’d have to get past me first if he aims to trouble her here.
It could be anything. All I know is she’s going to be a distraction, in my space, twenty-four hours a day.
I’m screwed if she leaves, screwed if she stays. With those sexy legs in those sexy shorts and that curve-hugging top putting her body on display, she tells me to get dressed?
No way…
With a huff, I lower another load of wood to the ground and make a promise as I wipe the sweat off my brow: Going forward, I’m going to do this right and proper. If anybody knew I didn’t read Georgiana’s cover letter and chose her on a toss of paper, they’d never give me a loan. If I want my own business, I’m going to have to own this. I am, after all, on probation.
From now on, it’s only the best business practices going forward, and not a single woman is going to distract me from my mission. Best I arrange a herd of them so they can distract each other.
I pick up my phone from where I left it on the trailer and step out of the barn to dial my cousin Rachel. It rings twice.
“Raiden!” Rachel answers, excitement lacing her voice. “How’re things going? Have you started building?”
“Hmm, things are a bit slow to take off today. How are things at the hotel?” I ask, not wanting to delve into my favor without prelude.
“Busy, busy, busy. Tourists and wedding season, so long hours, you know.”
“Yes, I bet. What’s your schedule tonight? You working?”
“Tonight, no. What’s up? You wanna grab a bite at Sharky’s later?”
“No, I’ve got to put some hours in today, but I was hoping you could come around and meet Ge-Ge—” I break off. Fuckit. Without a doubt Rachel already knows who Georgiana is. “Her. You know, the intern?”
“You mean, your intern,” Rachel says with a chuckle. “I had a lunch meeting with Hunter and spotted George from afar. What have you gotten yourself into this time, Ray?”
I smirk. “The usual. It’s a bit messy, but nothing I can’t manage with a bit of help.”
Rachel laughs. “Asking so sweetly. What d’you want me to do with her for you?”
“Fetch her after work and show her the town? I don’t know. Do girly stuff?”